Chapter 8: What Lies Beneath
Unable to sit still, Freya set out to tour the dungeon and give names to her ten little Mycofoxes. That left the question of what to call them. She thought it over a moment, then a smile came to her. Back on Earth, between all the anime and games, she’d ended up picking up the Japanese numbers. Might as well use them, easy to remember, and it had a nice little ring to it.
So she named them, each according to its order of arrival.
She started with the five workers. "You, you’ll be Ichi." The little one lifted its big round eyes to her, its glowing cap shifting to a curious green, as if it understood it was being talked about. "Ni, San, Shi..." Each one nosed forward in turn, claiming its share of attention. "And Go for the last."
Then came the five soldiers, decidedly less cooperative. "Roku. Nana. Hachi." That last one answered with a surly "Kyu!", fur bristling, visibly unconcerned with such pleasantries. "Kyū..." Freya paused, realizing the ninth one’s name sounded exactly like their little cry. She stifled a giggle. "And Jū to finish."
Ten names for ten balls of fur. It was childish, no doubt, but it warmed her heart a little. As if this dungeon were truly becoming hers.
As she continued her rounds, she noticed something in the Dungeon Farm. The harvests were piling up there, untouched, more and more of them. She frowned. The Mycofoxes were producing, sure enough, but nothing seemed to move afterward. She pushed on to the Mine: same thing, the ore accumulating in heaps without anyone touching it.
Strange. They extract it, but then what? It just stays... there?
She crouched by a pile of ore, lifted a piece, set it back down. A worker passed right by her without so much as a glance, hurrying off toward some other corner. She followed it with her eyes, and it clicked.
There was no destination. That was the problem. The Mycofoxes had been "coded" to extract a resource, carry it to a storage, then take it back from there when needed to use it. Except no storage existed yet. As a result, the chain jammed at the very first step: they produced, piled things up on the spot, and went in circles. She could move it all herself, by hand, but let’s be honest, that wouldn’t last three days.
So she made the call: a storage, to smooth everything out.
While she was at it, she also decided to rethink the Mycofoxes’ organization. No more fixed post assigned to each one; they’d rotate everywhere, as needs arose. Far more efficient that way.
Once the spot was chosen and dug out by Shi, she placed it just below the Heart chamber. It would be the dungeon’s nerve center, and its place was necessarily there, at the heart of everything.
"System, a Storage Vault here, please."
[ Create a Storage Vault for 25 mana points? ]
"Yes."
And it appeared. A vaulted room, its walls lined with alcoves and stone shelves, ready to hold everything the dungeon would produce. Almost at once, she saw a few Mycofoxes pour in, some hauling food from the Farm, others ore from the Mine.
So her hypothesis was correct. It reassured her, knowing those points had been well spent, in service of the dungeon’s smooth running.
She went to fetch the bandits’ weapons and belongings to deposit them as well. It worked, and a list appeared before her eyes at once.
[ Storage Vault — Level 1 ]
x10 bandit swords
x3 bandit daggers
x1 bandit bow
x14 bandit outfits
x9 Mycofox food resources
x2 mithrite
It really is just like a game, woow.
Her gamer’s soul flared up all over again. She settled in a little off to the side, and simply watched the dungeon run.
And the spectacle was fascinating. Ichi and San were coming up from the Mine, loaded with ore, their little paws pattering over the stone, their glowing caps shifted to the calm blue of quiet effort. They dropped their cargo in the Storage Vault, set off again at once, crossed paths with Go heading back down to the Farm at a brisk pace. Nana, meanwhile, was dragging a sack of harvest twice his size, bracing himself with an indignant "Kyu!" at every step, until Ni came to lend a hand without being asked.
One floor below, in the Guard Hall, the five soldiers were sparring against the training dummies. Roku struck, dodged, took a straw figure’s blow square on the snout, got back up with bristling fur and threw himself back into the fray all the fiercer, his little cap scarlet with rage. Jū, craftier, circled his wooden opponent with a growl, watching for an opening.
Freya stayed there a long while, chin in her hands, following that tiny, bustling ballet. Everything meshed, everything flowed, without her having to lift a finger. The resources that had stagnated for hours were finally moving, from one point to the next, like the gears of a well-oiled machine that had set itself in motion all on its own.
Her dungeon was beginning to live without her. To become self-sufficient.
... I could stay for hours watching this.
She smiled, her heart strangely light. She’d just discovered a new addiction in this world.
A few more hours slipped by before Aria finally came to pull her away from her occupation. Freya was playing with her new pen, while the free Mycofoxes searched for a new vein somewhere in the depths.
At the moment, she was struggling to solidify the ink just enough to carry it, like on a flying carpet, without it staining her clothes.
Aria approached, a smile on her lips.
"I see the gacha doesn’t bless you with a summon as sublime as myself every time."
In a teasing mood, Freya seized the chance to get a rise out of her.
"Don’t be so sure. This pen made me realize ranks are nothing but letters, in the end."
Aria’s smile crumbled all at once, and a "Tch" escaped her despite herself.
Freya couldn’t hold back a laugh. She was getting a better and better read on how the demon worked, and found her every bit as adorable as she was mad.
Gradually calming down, without setting aside her experiments with the pen, she resumed in a more serious tone.
"So, tell me. What did you learn from them?"
Aria’s smile returned at once, and she began her report.
"Thanks to what I drew out of them and my knowledge-related skills, I’ve been able to establish several things. We’re in the forest bordering the village of Velle, itself located in the kingdom of Artenzia. An absolute monarchy, ruled for twelve generations by House Von Artenzia, whose current sovereign is Salaran Dara Von Artenzia. The kingdom draws most of its economy from the trade of rare ores, magical or otherwise, thanks to the richness of its lands. It also maintains tense relations with the northern principalities, owing to an old border dispute dating back to..."
"Short. Keep it short, please." Freya raised a hand. "I know your skill is tied to knowledge, but this is far too much. You’ll keep all that in memory and give it to me when it’s relevant, all right?"
Aria pouted, but bowed her head.
"Very well."
"For now, I just want to know one thing. Was this so-called bandit chief really hiding something, yes or no?"
"He worked for a noble. A certain Baron Frarken, who governs the barony we’re in at this very moment. As for the chief of these brigands, he was a fallen knight; it was he who’d assembled this band, a convenient cover for carrying out the baron’s dirty work. His current mission was to wipe out every trace of life in the area. The baron, in turn, was acting on the orders of an unknown source, who had instructed him to buy these lands, and the forest as well."
"So this place potentially has value." Freya narrowed her eyes. "And the villagers refused to sell, or something like that. Hence the idea of wiping them off the map."
"Exactly. Except that’s precisely where it gets tricky: this land has no proven value. All I could dig up is an old legend. Long ago, a battle is said to have taken place here, between a demigod and a dragon king. That’s the only thing my skills could tie to these lands."
"A remnant of that battle, perhaps? A relic this unknown party covets."
"That’s what I think too. But there’s no proof such a relic really exists."
"And this unknown party, can you deduce who it is?"
"Unfortunately not. Not enough to go on. It could be any of twenty different people, from what I know."
"All right, all right. Thank you so much, Aria."
Freya let the revelation sink in a moment, and a faint dizziness took hold of her as she measured its scope.
The system had made her appear here, in this dungeon, upon her arrival in this world. She’d chosen nothing. And now she was learning that this stretch of forest, this seemingly worthless patch of land, was coveted by a noble, himself under the orders of an unknown power willing to raze entire villages to obtain it.
Mere coincidence? Or had the system deliberately placed her on this precise spot? The question ran through her, unanswered. One more to add to the pile.
What was certain was that her dungeon rested, quite literally, on a mystery that influential people were trying to uncover.
Whether that was a curse or a windfall remained to be seen. A danger, because sooner or later, those people would end up taking a little too much interest in these lands, and therefore in her. Or an opportunity, because if a relic really did slumber somewhere beneath her feet, better that she be the one to find it first. She, who happened to live underground, with an army of diggers at her disposal.
The idea had its appeal. But she filed it away in a corner of her mind, with the rest. One thing at a time.
"We’ll deal with all that later. And him, by the way, what became of him?"
"He succumbed to his wounds, unfortunately. Even as I was taking care not to brutalize him too much."
Freya glanced at her mana. [ 25/500 ]
After all, she’d tortured him for over ten hours. It was almost a miracle his body had held out that long.
"It’s fine, you’ve already done very well. I wasn’t expecting this much to begin with."
She ended her experiments, and with a simple mental command, the pen returned to the inner pocket of her jacket.
"Let’s go turn his body into mana."
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